How to Determine the Best Eyeshadow Colors for Making Your Eyes Standout
Over the past few weeks, I've been experimenting with different eyeshadow looks. While I usually I stick to my neutrals and warm tones, I've found myself dipping into a few other shades I rarely use. An interesting result I noticed is that there were certain tones I wore that made more of an impact than others, which is something that I want to dive into a bit more today.
I'll be sharing some of my favorite palettes for each eye color in part two, which you can find by clicking here.
I have what most people would consider "hazel" eyes. Meaning, they are an amber color around the pupil, but show a charcoal grey tone around the outside of the iris, with the dominant color of my eye being green/blue. They're basically multicolored.
When it comes to eyeshadows, there are multiple tones that will make my eyes "pop" in different ways and I can almost influence what color my eyes will mostly appear to be. Even if you don't have hazel eyes, you can do this too. It's all about identifying your eye color and understanding how to use the color wheel.
There are a ton of different color wheels you can look at if you really want to get specific about your eye color, but for ease, I'm just going to use this one so you get the idea of what to do. The first thing you're going to want to do when using the color wheel to determine what colors will best suit your eyes is to find your eye color on the wheel. From there, you're going to look directly across the wheel from that color. That new color is the color that will best compliment your eye color. This is called "complementary colors."
For example, if your eyes are light blue, the color that would best compliment your eyes is a red-orange (warm browns too). If your eyes are dark green, they will be best suited with a red tone. If your eyes are brown or amber, they will be shown off with purples and dark blues.
Now, in order to influence your eye color, you can work within those tones and the ones around it. What I mean by this is if you have blue eyes that have a bit of green in them, if you want them to appear more green, you would use more red tones rather than the orange/brown tones. This works with all eye colors, but sometimes it works better with others.
For those of you who have hazel eyes like myself, you can use the wheel to choose what tone you want to "pull" from your eye color when doing your eye makeup. When I want my eyes to appear more brown/amber, I wear more purple and blue toned shadows; if I want them to look more blue, I turn to my oranges and warm browns.
Another tip for really making your eyes standout is to use what are referred to as "analogous color schemes." These are the colors to the direct right and left of the complementary color. This is said to be very pleasing to the eye. When you do this, you want one of the three colors to be dominant, the other to be a supporting color, and the third to be an accent color. One way to execute this is to put one shade all over the lid (the dominant color), a second shade on the outer corner blended into the lash lines (the supporting color), and a third color placed right into the inner corner (the accent color).
There are a ton other techniques you can use to really make your eyes standout using the color wheel, such as using "triadic" colors. Tiger Color does an amazing job of explaining more about color harmonies and basic color combination techniques, you can read about it by clicking here.
Once you get used to using the color wheel and practice, you'll find it easy to influence the color of your eyes and make them standout. If you don't like the color that the color wheel shows will best suit your eyes, don't worry. There are no rules in makeup. You're always free to do your makeup however you'd like; this is just a suggestion of what would look best using basic color theory.
Be sure to check out part two to this post, The Best Eyeshadow Palettes Based on Your Eye Color, where I share my favorite recent palettes with you all for each eye color.
